[SUMMIT] Two Koreas agree to hold family reunions in August

SEOUL -- The two Koreas agreed to push for a fresh round of reunions for separate families in August, almost three years after the highly emotional event stopped at the height of cross-border tensions.

Family reunions were held annually since the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. However, it came to a halt in March 2010 when Seoul blamed a North Korean submarine for sinking the Cheonan warship. In November 2010, North Korea shelled the front-line island of Yeongpyong, killing four South Koreans.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to resume family reunions in a joint declaration that followed a historic summit at the truce village of Panmunjom. The meeting will take place on the occasion of August 15 when the two Koreas mark their liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.

Previously, Pyongyang demanded that in return for family reunions, Seoul return 12 female North Koreans who worked at a restaurant in China and defected to South Korea in 2016. Pyongyang accused South Korean intelligence agents of abducting them, but Seoul insisted they have come of their own volition.

Seoul has prioritized family reunions as divided family members are aged and many of them died. According to the unification ministry, there are about 65,000 South Koreans who wait to meet their separated family.

Millions of people were displaced by the sweep of the Korean conflict, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war. Direct cross-border exchanges of letters or telephone calls are banned.

North Korea had rejected Seoul's repeated requests to make the reunions longer and more frequent. The reunion program began in earnest after a historic North-South summit in 2000, but Pyongyang has long manipulated the reunion issue as a tool for extracting concessions from Seoul.